


nor heat nor gloom of night

by grainjew



Series: The Postman's Creed (a touch of wind at the heart) [2]
Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
Genre: Command Melody (Wind Waker), Earth Temple, Friendship, Gen, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Telepathy, creative reinterpretation of the wind waker and its songs, excessive stylistic influence from the riddle-master trilogy lmao, there's wind and music and harps what do you WANT from me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-26 02:18:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17133191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grainjew/pseuds/grainjew
Summary: Early in the Earth Temple, Link and Medli experiment with a melody and solve a puzzle.





	nor heat nor gloom of night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [windyautistic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/windyautistic/gifts).



> im the Medli fandom. the Medli fandom is me. I Love My Bird Daughter

Medli sat in a beam of rare sunlight three rooms into the Earth Temple and cleaned Chu-Chu guts off the edge of her harp with the corner of her dress. It would probably stain the fabric, but that was better than ruining her harp, especially now that she knew how important her playing was. Especially now that she had met one of the ancestors to whom the harp had belonged. She had a change of spare clothes. She didn't have a spare heirloom harp.

Link was a few feet away, staring at something that shimmered oddly in the ambient light, his sword still out.

The Master Sword. Ganondorf. That kind boy who helped Valoo, the Hero. Her, a Sage, with a purpose and a destiny that affected the whole world.

Well, she could believe Link to be the Hero.

Back then, even, with the bare courage to scale a volcano for people he hardly knew, armed only with a sword and his wits. And now all the more, the way he held that legendary sword like it had always been in his hand and carried that grim determination like it was part of him. It didn't matter, somehow, that he was no older than twelve or that his eyes widened to an incredible degree when he was startled, which was remarkably often for a figure of legend. It didn't matter at all, not when he conducted with the Wind Waker and caught her when she fell.

“Link,” she said, and turned her harp over in her lap to make sure the back was clean, sending an arc of light streaking across the walls. He turned around to look at her. There were Chu-Chu guts staining his boots. “Is the whole Temple going to be like this, do you think?”

He shrugged and made an upside-down smile with his mouth, as if to say _yeah, probably._

She felt bad for asking, suddenly. Link, the Hero, was obvious. But Medli, the Sage of Earth? She knew her duty, and she knew the necessity, but equally she knew that there had to be someone better suited to this honor out there in the Great Sea. What had Medli ever done, beyond be bad at flying and worse at attending? She didn't even know enough of the old language to understand the Great Valoo half the time, let alone read the scattered inscriptions in this Temple.

The aerie looked to her for guidance, and then she failed them and the Great Valoo until Link came and dealt with the problem on his own, with frightening ease. And after that, she slipped away in the middle of the night to fulfill another duty, abandoning them without even a note. She hoped the Great Valoo would understand. She was so glad that Komali had found another role model in Link, because he was so much more suited to it than her.

He was looking at her now, consideringly — how could someone so expressive be so hard to read? — then with one last practiced glance around the room he sheathed his sword, sat down on the little pedestal he'd been staring at, and pulled out paper and a pen.

“It's just,” continued Medli, to fill the silence he made, “Dragon Roost Cavern was all full of monsters too, I saw that much as I was flying through. So it makes sense for it to be like that here, also. But I hope it isn't this terribly _still,_  the entire Temple. There isn't even a breeze, the air feels so _heavy_.”

She wasn't much of a flier, but this would drag down even Quill, who delivered letters across all the seas; even Komali with his instinctive talent.

And the monsters were a similar worry.

Medli had no martial training, let alone a weapon of her own— the Great Valoo's attendant was to remain unarmed, as an arbiter of the aerie's peace and prosperity, and she suspected that the rules for a Sage were similar. She had explained the situation to Link after the King of Red Lions tasked them with keeping each other safe and saw them off, and Link had touched the sword at his back and nodded once like he was trying to say that he understood.

But leaving the fighting to him had only worked until some stray Chu-Chu jumped her while his back was turned and she'd managed on some inborn instinct to bash it into oblivion with her harp. That got the attention of another one. And then another. And before long the ground around her, the wall beside her, and the ornate face of her harp were all covered in horrible red-and-green goo.

So she sat in the wan sunbeam at the center of this room and polished her harp till it shone blindingly in even the pale, watery light, and explained her concerns to Link.

He stood up, shoving his pen back into his satchel, and walked over. Then he crouched in front of her and handed her the piece of paper to read.

It said simply, in his skittery, childish scrawl: _Can I try something?_

She read it a second time, to see if she'd missed something. She hadn't, and his big eyes were an odd kind of patient as he waited.

“Of course,” she said. She was already trusting him with her life and destiny by letting him lead her into this Temple where her ancestor had died. It was kind of him to ask, though. “What do you want to try?”

Instead of answering, or maybe in answer, he stood up and slipped the Wind Waker out of his sleeve, and— and Medli felt a _breeze._

Just the faintest movement of an air current, a sensation so minute she would never have noticed it anywhere else, but in this damp, still cavern it blew with the force and chill of a northern gale. It moved towards Link, towards the Wind Waker, and without quite knowing how she'd got there Medli was standing, leaning back into it as her arms turned to wings and it ruffled her feathers. _Wind._  She had hardly been here an hour and she already missed it.

Link shut his eyes, smiling softly — he had missed the wind as much as her for all he didn't have any wings — and then he raised the tip of the Wind Waker and that faint breeze, hissing a thin, fine note, followed. For the air, Link conducted a song, and, for the Waker of the Winds, the air sang in a faint, sibilant tone that echoed off cracked stone and packed, ancient earth.

And at the close of it, when the last breath of wind was settling and only the faintest thrum of sound remained, a new awareness blossomed behind Medli's eyes.

Link was curious, impatient, watchful. An image — a memory? — of a room that looked like nothing she had ever seen, and in the middle of it a rough face of rock that looked very much like something she had spent her whole life wondering about: like the face of rock on the little islet behind Dragon Roost associated with the god of wind. But this one had different notes, and different words of the old language. She had only managed to decipher the word _melody_ when instead of looking at a rock she was looking at some kind of moving statue, its eyes glowing eerie blue, at a tower rising out of the sea, glittering, at the King of Red Lions, hearing him advise use of a certain song, at a beam of light, at herself, at the stone again, at a million different images too rapid for her to understand until all her vision was light and then with a _snap_ like the breaking of a harp string she was thrown back into herself, blinking over and over to get the spots out of her eyes.

She stumbled out of the sunlight over to the pedestal Link had been staring at earlier, and sat down hard, pressed the heels of her hands into closed eyes until her vision cleared.

When she looked back up, Link was crouched in front of her again, looking concerned. He said, very softly, “I'm sorry.”

It was only the second time Medli had ever heard him speak, and the crushing stillness of this Temple made his voice even smaller than she remembered. She blinked again, at all the strangenessess, patted beside herself for him to sit.

He sat.

On his little piece of paper, he wrote, _I'm sorry. I lost control._

“I saw your memories,” wondered Medli, not really meaning to ignore him.

 _It worked!_ he wrote, and then chanced a look at her and added, _Sort of, I mean._ He made a gesture, froze partway through and moved his hand to the paper again. _Did I hurt you?_

“What, no, not at all!” said Medli. It was true: now that she could see right she didn't even have a headache, and even if it hadn't been true he looked so distressed she would have lied. “I'm fine. If you don't mind me asking, though, what kind of power lets you share memories like that? What kind of song?” Medli turned to him fully, and didn't bother to curb the excitement leaking into her tone as she tapped her fingers on her harp. “Could you conduct it again, please? Do you think I could maybe learn it?”

Link tilted his head at her, questioning, or maybe contemplating. She missed that easy connection the melody had granted them, so that she knew what he was thinking even if he didn't speak.

“I mean, it's alright if you don't think I can! I need a lot more practice before I get really good at harping, I know that! But at least, if you don't mind, can you conduct something, even if it's not that? It was so wonderful, to feel a breeze…”

Interrupting her, Link stood up, the Wind Waker back in his hand, and called to its magic Medli stood too, a faint rush of air suddenly at her back and her harp in her hands.

She took a deep breath, realizing what he meant to do. He nodded. She nodded back. He raised the Wind Waker, and Medli readied her hand above the strings of the harp.

They began.

He conducted, and this time she followed, plucking tentative notes to the time of his baton. Hardly a rest and they played again, more confidently now as a phantom wind rushed in her ears and the melody shaped itself under her fingers into a pleasant sort of tune, neither cheery nor somber but altogether pleasant to the ear, and undergirded by the hissing wail of a familiar wind. And as the last notes echoed back from the packed earth of the walls, that connection snapped once again into place.

Link was relieved, worried, apologetic, suddenly startled.

He could feel her?

And hadn't before.

Medli wondered what her thoughts sounded like, suddenly terrified — Link sent her a warm wash of reassurance. Trust. She trusted him back. He smiled, she smiled back.

“It worked!” she shouted, smile growing. The sound echoed off the walls, distorted. “Oh, sorry, that was loud…”

Link sent her another wave of reassurance. It was strange, how much more open he seemed, when suddenly they didn't need to speak to communicate.

He shrugged.

Oops, right, he could hear her thoughts.

He shrugged again, and his mouth made a sort of upside-down smile. Then Medli was looking at that memory of a stone again, and superimposed over it was a memory of the King of Red Lions teaching Link to read certain words in the ancient language.

Eventually, when she was done piecing the memories together, Medli asked, “It's called the Command Melody? Did I get that right?”

Link nodded, and sent her a memory of using it to control those strange statues she had caught a glimpse in the first set of memories.

“Oh, that's why you were so cautious about using it on me, you didn't know how it would work on someone who wasn't a statue, right?”

A nod. And then she felt a tentative inquisitiveness from him, like he was trying to find the right words to ask some question. Except it wouldn't be words, not like this. The right memories? A wry sort of affirmation. So she was right.

And then, an image of her harp flashing light across the walls, and an image of the indistinct shadowy shimmering Link had been staring at earlier. Puzzling over. The images flicked back and forth in sequence, and then Link added a third, of a purple Chu-Chu turning to stone when he lured it into the light.

“ _Oh,_ ” Medli realized. “Link, you're brilliant!”

He blushed, and tried to send her nonchalant dismissiveness, even though he was obviously flattered. Medli laughed at him, then made her way to the weak circle of sunlight as he stepped off to the side.

It took some finagling, several false starts, some encouraging thoughts from Link, and one near-blinding, but eventually Medli was reflecting a beam of concentrated sunlight at the strange shimmering, and slowly, before her eyes, it shaped itself, shadow weaving and hardening to wood, translucence turning to metal, a treasure chest emerging from thin air and light. She lowered the harp and stared.

The chest remained solid.

Some of her incredulity must have leaked over to Link, because he sent smugness at her mind and made a face. On impulse, against all the rules of propriety she had ever learned, Medli stuck her tongue out at him. He grinned.

“So, um, should we open it?” she asked, when their childish standoff broke.

He beckoned her over and lifted the lid, then stuck his whole head in before she could even come up next to him. It looked, uh, completely ridiculous.

A distinct sense of _shut up_ was immediately projected into her mind. She laughed.

Then Link removed his entire upper body from the treasure chest with an effort, a piece of paper clutched in his right hand.

She sent impatient question into his mind, but didn't have to wait long, because he spread the paper between them so they could both look.

“Oh! It's a map!” realized Medli immediately. Had her ancestor Laruto left it there for visitors? That was very kind of her. But if it had been there that long… “How is the paper not turning to dust? It's been centuries since the last Sage was murdered.”

She got a sense of confused resignation from Link, and the conclusion that it was probably some sort of magic.

“That does make sense, hehe.” Some things were just mysteries. Amused agreement. Medli looked more closely at the map, locating the room they stood in, them straightened up and turned to the door.

They had a map, and a new use for her harp that wasn't killing Chu-Chus, and a way to talk without saying words, and a quiet, instinctive trust. She said, “Shall we keep going?”

Link nodded, and, together, they made their way through the door, towards their destinies.

**Author's Note:**

> me: why are these fics so narration-heavy??  
> me, two seconds later: oh right link doesn't talk


End file.
